13 October 2017

Nanyang Technological University will start awarding honours degrees according to a new nomenclature starting with the batch of students due to graduate in January next year.

The current First Class Honours will be known as Honours (Highest Distinction). The Second Class (Upper) Honours will be renamed as Honours (Distinction). The Second Class (Lower) Honours will be renamed as Honours (Merit). A Third Class Honours or a Pass with Merit will become Honours, while the Pass qualification — for those who do not qualify for honours — will remain.

These changes are made in order to better reflect the quality of NTU students, and is similar to nomenclature used by major American universities like Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.

The National University of Singapore was the first local university to implement such changes to its honours degree nomenclature in 2014.

According to NTU deputy provost for education Kam Chan Hin, the academic standards and cumulative grade point average (CGPA) scores required to achieve each degree classification will not change. A CGPA of 4.5 (out of 5) is still needed for an Honours (Highest Distinction) degree, a score of 4 will qualify for Honours (Distinction), and 3.5 will translate into an Honours (Merit).